Couple sentenced in Schuylkill elderly death

A Mahanoy City couple who allowed an elderly relative to “rot into the mattress” will serve three to 24 months in state prison.

Schuylkill County Judge John E. Domalakes imposed the sentence Wednesday after listening to four people speak to the characters of John F. Latshaw Jr., 59, and Dorothy Robinson, 55.

The couple on March 1 pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter in the August 2015 death of Latshaw’s 76-year old mother, Elaine Latshaw.

Charges of third-degree murder, recklessly endangering another person, and neglect of care of a dependent person were dropped.

The couple will report on May 16 to begin their sentences.

An autopsy revealed that sepsis and dehydration contributed to her death.

Elaine Latshaw also suffered from untreated pressure sores on her buttocks, back and feet. One foot was black and appeared mummified, and she suffered a maggot infestation, according to testimony and an affidavit of probable cause.

‘Horrendous death’

Elaine Latshaw “suffered a horrendous death,” said Assistant District Attorney Jennifer N. Foose, who asked Domalakes to sentence the couple to 12 to 24 months in state prison.

Latshaw and Robinson were the “primary caregivers” who let the victim “basically rot into the mattress.”

Robinson’s lawyer, Frederick J. Fanelli, countered that his client has only an eighth-grade education; her longtime partner, Latshaw, has never been to school in his life.

Despite that, they raised seven children, making sure they all had good educations. They did their best to honor Elaine Latshaw’s wishes to be brought home from the nursing home she was in to be allowed to die at home.

Elaine Latshaw, he said, “lost the will to live.” She refused to engage in self-care while in the nursing home, and “pleaded with her son to bring her home.”

The charges against his client, Fanelli said, were a “collision at the intersection of individual rights and the rule of law.”

John Latshaw worked long hours every day as a trucker, leaving Robinson to care for his mother, a task for which she was poorly equipped.

The couple did their best to honor Elaine Latshaw’s wishes, he said.

“You can’t force a person to accept care if they don’t want it,” Fanelli told Domalakes.

“They loved that woman. They grieve for her,” he said.

Honoring wishes

Latshaw’s lawyer, James G. Conville, also pointed to his client’s lack of education and efforts to honor his mother’s wishes.

He said Latshaw tried to keep his mother in rehab so she could walk again, but to no avail.

He called four witnesses — the Rev. Susan Wollyung of Tobyhanna; Bruce Sauder of East Earl, Lancaster County; Dean Klinger of Pine Grove; and William Kahres of Shillington, Berks County.

Wollyung testified that she got to know the couple when her late husband pastored a church in Mahanoy City. She described them as “salt of the earth” people who helped any and all.

“They were very devoted (to Elaine Latshaw),” she said. “They were going to do their darnedest.”

Sauder, a trucker and pastor of a Mennonite church in Lancaster, said he’s known Latshaw for about 20 years.

Latshaw wanted to honor his mother’s wishes, Sauder said.

Klinger and Kahres both have a business for which Latshaw, an independent trucker, worked.

They both described him as a hard worker, reliable and honest, and said their own businesses would suffer without his help.

“These folks don’t have a mean bone in their body,” Conville said of the couple.

Fanelli and Conville asked for probation and house arrest. Domalakes stood firm for his sentences.

The case

According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by Mahanoy City police officer Thomas J. Rentschler, Latshaw had been confined to her bed since being brought home from a Weatherly nursing home in December 2014.

Emergency crews arrived at the couples’ house at about 11 a.m. Aug. 15, 2015 after a 911 call concerning a possible death.

Elaine Latshaw’s room smelled strongly of urine and feces, and she was in a soaked diaper, lying in a bed on which the bare mattress was soiled with waste and blood.

She was not breathing, was cold to the touch, and had no pulse, Rentschler wrote.

She died from aspiration pneumonia due to multiple pressure ulcerations, gangrene and malnutrition due to hypertensive vascular disease with vascular dementia, according to the affidavit.